Tuesday, November 24, 2009

More On Hatred of Gingers

More On Hatred of Gingers

I mentioned a couple of days ago the hatred of "gingers"--those redheaded, freckled sorts. A couple of interesting points.

1. If you rearrange the letters in "gingers," it turns into an offensive term for black people. You might wonder if the original South Park episode was making fun of racism against black people.

2. I'm told that the hostility to gingers predates South Park and comes out of Britain. Might this have been a proxy for anti-Irish sentiment? I remember a British co-worker telling me once that the wheelbarrow was invented to get Irish up on two legs.

UPDATE: Here's a clip from a British comedy show about the problem:

No comments:

Post a Comment